The Importance of Cyber Awareness Training

I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of times just how beneficial Cyber Awareness Training can be for your organisation – but you may be asking yourself just how important it actually is in terms of your organisations Cyber Security and protection.  

99% of cyber-attacks involve some form of human interaction and so will target people and not systems. In this article, Ipswich based Corbel Solutions are going to outline just how much of an impact Cyber awareness training can have on your organisations overall security and why it makes such a difference.

What is Cyber Awareness Training?

Essentially, Cyber Awareness Training is a form of training which helps employees to understand what cyber threats look like, how they work and what their response should be if they were to encounter a threat. It varies across organisations, however when you’re looking for a cyber training portal, you should consider that all staff work differently (we will look more at this later on.)

Cyber Awareness Training is critical in helping organisations prevent and mitigate user risk. You don’t want your users to be caught at the end of a potential cyber-attack. There is always an opportunity for all members of staff to educate themselves further on what they can do to keep Cyber Secure, and it should not be overlooked.

Why is Cyber Awareness Training so Important?

It is important to remember that regardless of size, that all organisations can find themselves susceptible to a cyber-attack, which is why Cyber Awareness Training is something that all organisations should prioritise. Alongside this, having this training in place is going to significantly prevent any downtime within the organisation. In the scenario in which a Cyber-Attack occurs, there is potential for operations to be significantly down for the attacks duration and recovering from a ransomware attack can take days, weeks and even months depending on the severity and the robustness of your business continuity solution. In order to prevent this from occurring in the first place, it is paramount to make sure staff know the signs of a Cyber-Attack and what to do in the case of one.  

Over the past few years, many organisations have adopted a hybrid working structure, subsequent to the pandemic, in order to help employees achieve a greater sense of work-life balance. Whilst this provides many benefits to employee wellbeing and satisfaction, it also comes with greater risk as devices are being physically taken outside of the organisations network. This means they are being exposed to a greater range of risk and hackers. To minimise this increased risk, it is essential your employees are aware of what they can do in the case of a cyber-attack.

Cyber awareness training can also ensure your business meets with compliance requirements, which will ultimately help to provide your customers with confidence. We’re all becoming more and more aware of Cyber Security and the implications it can have. So, if your customers can evidently see that you are actively taking the measures to improve your Cyber Security then it is likely to generate trust and strengthen your relationship. Where you’ve implemented these safe cyber practices, a culture of Cyber Security can be encouraged.

What to Look for in a Cyber Training Portal

As mentioned, all employees work differently and you need to be able to recognise this, but one of the most important things to look for in the Cyber Training portal is repetition. By this we mean, that it is physically not possible for a one-size fits all approach to be implemented. Your organisation is likely made up of all sorts of different people who all learn in completely different ways. However, repetition in short bursts is proven to work in the long term.

Where cyber-attacks become harder to spot, you will want your employees to be continually reminded of the things to look out for in order to prevent them. It would be ideal to use a platform such as the one we use at Corbel for our Cyber Awareness Training which has a range of short, achievable video content combined with integrated tools that teach on the job as this will cater to all learning types.

The platform we use here at Corbel gives your employees an initial benchmarking score depending on your Cyber Security knowledge and then there is opportunity to understand your employees initial level of knowledge and measure improvement over time.

An annual 45-minute video is given of all the Cyber-Attack trends to look at for in the year and is followed by around 20 questions afterwards in order to show understanding. However as mentioned above, the platform focuses on repetitive, short videos and so the videos the platform shares throughout the rest of the year tend to be minutes long and again are followed by a few questions to show understanding and highlight any potential risks within the team.

Phishing Simulation and Dark Web Monitoring

Alongside Cyber Awareness Training, phishing simulation is an integral part of cyber training. Phishing simulations tend to be sent out on a quarterly basis and essentially are an email which mimic a genuine phishing email which an employee would receive during an attack. They are made to look as credible and as genuine as possible to employees with only a small error that employees should (with sufficient training) pick up on.

After a phishing campaign has occurred, employers are sent out a report which details who opened the email, who clicked on the link and who entered their credentials. As a result of this employers are then able to see which employees could benefit from some additional training and refer them to particular videos on the training platform.

Additionally, dark web monitoring is essential in alerting your organisation if any of your credentials go up for sale on the dark web. You can’t necessarily take your credentials down for sale off the dark web, however if you have been alerted that they have been put up then you can limit the damage of a potential data breach and take the steps necessary to protect your business, employees, and clients.

Implementing a Cyber Training model that incorporates Cyber Awareness training, phishing simulations and dark web monitoring is essential to maintaining high levels of Cyber Security.

Do you Need Help Implementing Cyber Training into your Organisation?

If you’re looking to implement a cyber training model into your organisation, now has never been such a good time to do so. We all know that Cyber-Attacks are on the up and hackers are becoming smarter and more direct with their attacks, but how will you ensure that your organisation is doing all it can to prevent anyone from slipping up, resulting in fatal implications?

If you want to ensure that your business data is fully protected, it is important that you have sufficient training and monitoring in place in order to prevent user intervention from proposing a great data risk. To discuss the cyber training model that Corbel have to offer then either give us a call on 01473 241525 to chat to one of our team members or email us on info@corbel.co.uk for more information.

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Ipswich based Corbel solutions are a Business IT Support partner who work throughout Ipswich, Felixstowe, Stowmarket and the surrounding Suffolk area, providing a range of services including IT consultancy, Cyber Security, Office 365 support and more. If you’re looking for some more information either give us a call on 01473 241515 or email us at info@corbel.co.uk.